Summer Vacation

Summer school ended on Aug 1st and now we're on a 1 month break. It went rather fast and I think all our summer volunteers did a great job. It was fun getting to hang out with them and visit places like Shang Bai Shang and Tumen (I'll post those pics next). I was worried about a difficult Ss but he ended up not being so bad at all as the semester went on. PTL for that.

With more free time I have begun some extra studies. Right now I'm doing a Study with a couple of folks from downtown. It should be about once a week but I may teach some more since I'm on break and I'll be doing some traveling next week. One male Ss is almost my age and in the L and the other Ss is female, married & and has a child. She has not made a decision but is at least open to learning and wanting to know more Eng. They are in my leaders class that I substitute taught for twice. I guess they liked my teaching enough that they wanted to learn from me personally.

I also had an opportunity to have a four day course with a former Ss of mine from last semester. I met up with him for dinner during the summer semester and did some sharing. In the end he was open to having a study with me. We studied for four days straight last week for about a couple hours at a time. In the end he thought it was interesting but didn't accept it. I hope he will change his mind later. I wanted to cram a study session with him since he will be an exchange Ss in SK next semester and I may not see him again.

I got to see the Olym. opening ceremony on tv while it was happening live. It's the first time I've seen the games without NBC. I rather enjoyed the fact that there were no commercial breaks and that it was live. The only problem was that I could only get it with Chinese or Korean commentary, but at least part of the speech was in Eng. (If you absolutely have to be mono-lingual in this life, hopefully you know Eng.) It is also cool to see a larger variety of events including no time delay. I wish NBC would do that. If all goes well too I'll be seeing some events in person next week.

Take care and call if you can.

Torch Day in My City

On July 16th I tried to catch the running of the torch when it came to our city but my class got out too late. It was ok we got to finish off our search for the torch with a great dinner. The first pic is of people leaving the spot where the relay ended. We at least got some shots with people who may have seen the torch bearers.

Food #8

Now this was some really good Chinese food. The first pic is shrimp and veggies, the 2nd is of seafood and tofu, the 3rd is breaded pork with a sweet orange sauce, the last pic is of upside down dumplings. They get that shape from a pan obviously.

Food #7

Here some more food pics to enjoy. These are thick white noodles that go into a soup broth, the red stuff is chicken with glass noodles and there is chicken rice porridge. The cake was for someone's birthday. As you could already guess one of the most exciting things to do downtown is eating. But there's also Karaoke which is one of our pastimes here. They call it K-TV. (The building shot is next to the restaurant, I just wanted to take a picture of it.)

The more things change...........

Well considering I live near Anaheim and used to have an annual pass to a very large themepark it was kind of humorous to see this. However I think it's the year of the rat.

My Living Space

To change things up a bit I'm showing some pictures of my faculty room.


1) This is a picture of walk area that leads up to my room. The stuff in glass is old Korean artifacts the Pres's wife likes to collect. If you turn 180 from here now we're heading to my room.


2)Here is a view from a window outside my door. The building at the end (in the middle of the picture) is where I work.


3) Third pic is my front door.


4) This is my lovely bath room.


5) Here some towels and the propane canisters I use to heat my shower water.


6) Next is the hallway in my room that leads to the front door.




7-8) This is my bedroom/living room/studyroom etc. You can see the lovely curtains and blinds I had installed.




9-10) This is the patio where I keep my food, dry my laundry and cook food.


11) Finally here is the view from my patio. the curved roof is where we have E. service.

Food #6

This place is really cool cause they grind the rice for you to see, the waitresses wear the traditional Koren dress and they even shine your shoes while you eat.